Hardly has the ink dried in signing the “Union
Accord”, better known as “Pyidaungsu Accord” in Burmese, optimistic and as well
pessimistic views started to surface in the media. And closely related to it is
the linking of “non-secession” clause demanded by the
government-military-parliament from the ethnic nationalities – 8 signatory
Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and ethnic political parties – and the
“rights of self-determination” for the non-Bamar ethnic groups, in the form of
self-drawn and adopted constitution for each individual ethnic states.

Let us first look at what the Union Accord has to
offer and a bit closer.

Pyidaungsu
Accord

37 agreements approved
by the Union Peace Conference—21st Century Panglong (UPC-21CP) 2nd session were
signed by group leaders and witnesses as
a part of the Pyidaungsu Accord.

Part 1 of the Pyidaungsu Accord signed in this
conference includes 12 agreements on political sector, 11 on economic sector, 4
on social sector and 10 on land and natural environment sector, altogether 37
agreements.

Going through the Pyidaungsu Accord and its four
appendices, one would find almost not much to complain, as most are general
terms that every stakeholders might have aimed for and could live with it.
According to a keen observer: “To my understanding, the EAOs agreed to sign
after the resolution that the khwe Ye twe Ye (secession and fusion) question
would be reconsidered at the next UPC-21CP. All that left were almost
universally accepted maxims, according to the observer, comparable to 'The sun
rises in the east and sets in the west'“.

Another urging came from the government's side,
who is friendly to the EAOs' side, also
urged the EAOs to sign it saying: “Please try to do something for her. She
hasn't made first sale of the day yet”.

She would have lost face, if she couldn't show
anything for all her efforts. But the Framework for Political Dialogue (FPD)
and Terms of Reference (TOR) also specifies that there would be a signing of
the points agreed at each session.

Still there was a real angst that the signing of
Pyidaungsu Accord would not materialized,
as Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and Arakan Liberation Party
(ALP) maintained that they would not sign the accord, as they were not allowed
to conduct national discussion among their own people of Shan and Arakan
respectively, as they were blocked by the government-military decision-makers.
And thus the argument was: without inputs and consent from their own people
they were not in a position to agree to anything.

The debacle was resolved by agreeing that only
the group representative of EAOs, Kwe Htoo Win, would sign and not all 8 EAOs'
representatives. Likewise, U Thu Wai, representative for political parties,
inked the first part of the Union Accord. But still the produced document lacks
a solid consensus in a legal sense, so to speak.

Different interpretation on authenticity of Union
Accord and secession issue

Apart from the authentic, or rather the full
acceptance of the representative groups involving in the first Union Accord
signing is now a controversial issue, as Shan Nationalities League for
Democracy's (SNLD) spokesperson Sai Leik
came up recently, in VOA report of June 1, with a doubtful remark
saying: “Within political parties cluster no agreement was reached. The time
was spent quarreling with each other. It is questionable whether just one or
two were asked to sign without common agreement among the political parties. If
we are going to continue in this pattern, the future Nationwide Ceasefire
Agreement (NCA) path would become less valuable, less trustworthy and see that
the peace process could be jeopardized.”

State Counselor Office’s spokesperson Zaw Htay
doesn't seem to have the same opinion, as he wrote in his article titled,
“Right of self-determination, commitment and bravery”, in DVB of May 31 that
during the UPC-21CP, Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) members
debated over federalism on non-secession and rights of self-determination
issues, the cluster of government (government, parliament and Tatmadaw) and
political parties cluster were all in ageement except only a few backing the 8
EAOs' position.

According to him the EAOs only wanted to accept
the non-secession clause with a conditional clause, which says “so long as
equality, rights of self-determination are practiced there will be no
secession”.

While there could be disagreement on what Zaw
Htay said, particularly where the political parties cluster within the UPDJC,
on the full acceptance of the first Union Accord, the non-secession demand of
the government is loud and clear.

Zaw Htay closed and summed up his opinion piece
stating three points. Firstly, for another convention there is still time of
six months left and lots of discussions, negotiations need to be done.
Secondly, (EAOs) guarantee non-secession and take (enjoy) rights of
self-determination, the commitment (by the government) that would be still
there. Thirdly, no need to be downhearted for the first political convention.
The following convention would be able to achieve more solid basic principles.

Earlier in an interview with the news media he
also said that in order to give the military a sort of guarantee the EAOs and
the ethnic political parties should promised that they will not secede.

He pointed out that the military coup in 1962 is due to the belief of the
military that federalism could bring dismemberment of the country. But failed
to admit that this military undertaking in the form of military coup has been a
failure that paved the way for a full blown ethnic rebellion, followed by more
human rights violations and accompanying hatred that are still present and
become the order of the day in many ethnic states.

On the government non-secession demand the SNLD
made a press conference on June 1, at its headquarter, where Party spokesman
Sai Nyunt Lwin said: “We never demand secession from the union. We are already
there to cooperate,” adding, “this is to clearly dispel accusation and rumors
that we are not demanding secession.”

All this come about as SNLD rejected the
non-secession clause demanded by the government to be included in the Union
Accord.

Sai Nyunt Lwin made his point by arguing that no
such words that could hold back participation of the EAOs that are still
negotiating and about to negotiate be used during this period, as this would
discourage them from joining the peace conference.

“If we want to secede from the union, we only
need to do one thing. We would disregard the treaty signed in 1947. Until we
haven't done that, it is normal as it used to be,” he stressed as a matter of
fact.

Another SNLD party elder, Sai Leik filled in by
saying, “To simplify more than this, if we don't want peace and like to secede
from the union, we won't form political party and no reason to attend the
convention.”

But the most hard-hitting response came from Sai
Kyaw Nyunt, SNLD's UPDJC representative. He said: “We didn't even make use of
our right (to establish our own independent state) and get into this (Union of
Burma). Given such condition, do you people still want to prohibit us with
non-secession clause?”

He stressed: “This is concerned with the dignity
of establishment of the union. This has to do with our Shan dignity. By saying
this, it is not meant to secede but the need to respect each others.”

What now?

The rejection of the EAOs conditional clause by
the government could be countered by asking: “If the non-secession promise is
not given by the ethnic nationalities, would there be no more federal union?”

Isn't the government demand also a conditional
clause?

It would be far more better to accept the fact
that the 1948 Union of Burma is formed through voluntary participation of
ethnic nationalities' states, together with Burma Proper or Ministerial Burma.
In other words, the components that formed the union in 1948 joined to
establish a new country as independent, self-administered, separate political
entities and no one has the right to dictate or take away their rights of
self-determination, including the rights of secession.

After all, it is far more important and wiser
move to build trust and mold better understanding, in the ongoing process of peace
negotiation, rather than comes up with the blunt demand of eternal fusion and
unity first, that has irked and bred more distrust of the government, which the
ethnic people considered to be just a Bamar-dominated regime.